one of the problems of obituaries is that the people who earn them in the mainstream press are the people who were covered, during their lives, by the mainstream press. the people whose lives were visible.

up through the 1960s and 1970s, those people were, disproportionately, men.

while it’s hardly heart-warming to dwell on some future time when all the women will die so we can have gender parity in obituaries, i do think it’s important that we be aware of the differences in the way we write about women’s lives at this level.